Essay 24

What were the social, political, and economic effects of World War I on France and England?

I. Introductory paragraph

II. Social

• General:
  • greater power for labor unions
• France:
  • heavy losses in manpower (1,385,000 deaths)=loss of a generation of Frenchman and created a leadership vacuum when that generation came of age
  • pop. had fallen behind England and Germany in 19th century and hard to sustain wartime losses
  • large amounts of property damage because most of the war on the western front was fought on French soil
• England:
  • granted women right to vote immediately after war
  • women acted more independently (i.e. bobbing their hair, shortening their skirts, smoking in public)
  • gap between rich and poor lessened
  • bottom third lived better than ever before (gained most from severe shortage of labor)

III. Political

• Treaty of Versailles:
  • France: Clemenceau “tiger of France”
  • England: Lloyd George
  • US: Woodrow Wilson
  • Differences between Great Britain and France would lead to tensions and weakness of the treaty
• France:
  • regained Alsace-Lorraine from Treaty of Versailles
  • became dominated by moderates
  • communists vs. socialists
• England:
  • women’s suffrage
  • rise of the Labour Party
    • working class and social equality
    • limited government, competitive capitalism, individual responsibility
    • Ramsay MacDonald – first Labour PM
    • other party was Conservative party under Stanley Baldwin

IV. Economic

• General:
  • relied on/in debt to the United States
  • women entered the workforce during war - revolutionized women's place in modern society
• France:
  • demanded reparations from Germany
  • destruction of agricultural land and loss of manpower led to increase on imports
  • war left strain on government finances
• England:
  • suffered greatly during WWI, but would've been worse without substantially worse without help from British Empire and Dominions
  • had been creditor to the world
  • cost of war so great that England consumed all its credits and became indebted to the United States
  • world's financial center shifted from England to US and from London to New York

V. Conclusion